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Mustard Pickles

A pickled vegetable mixture flavored with mustard, turmeric, and vinegar.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 12 ingredients
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Why it works: Cucumber and cauliflower match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 584 recipes. Both carry 2-hexenal, which smells green, leafy. The science ↓

Mustard Pickles

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare

  1. Cut the cucumbers, onions, cauliflowers, green peppers, green tomatoes, and carrots into small pieces.

  2. Layer the vegetables in a jar, sprinkling generously with salt.

  3. Let stand overnight.

Cook and seal

  1. In the morning, empty the jar into a kettle and bring to a boil.

  2. Drain the mixture in a colander.

  3. In a separate pot, mix the vinegar, turmeric, dry mustard, flour, and sugar, and boil well.

  4. Pour the boiling mixture over the drained vegetables and seal in jars.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Cucumber + cauliflowertop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together584 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-hexenal (green, leafy).

  2. Cauliflower + turmerictop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together514 recipes

    Shared aroma: coumarin (sweet, hay).

  3. Cucumber + tomatotop 4% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together2,405 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

  4. Cucumber + turmerictop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,102 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Pepper + turmerictop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,478 recipes

    Shared aroma: guaiacol (smoky, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Vinegar
Provides the acidity that preserves the vegetables and gives the pickle its tang.
Dry mustard
Adds the sharp, pungent flavour that defines a mustard pickle.
Flour
Thickens the boiled vinegar mixture into a smooth sauce that coats the vegetables.
Sugar
Sweetens and balances the sharp acidity of the vinegar.
Turmeric
Gives the pickle its characteristic yellow colour and a mild earthy aroma.

The step that matters

Boiling the vinegar, mustard, and flour mixture well. Flour and dry mustard clump easily when added to liquid. Boiling thoroughly cooks the starch so it thickens smoothly and loses its raw floury taste, and the sauce stays even rather than lumpy.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cucumber, cauliflower, pepper, tomato, carrot, vinegar, turmeric):

  1. Capsicumfits better
  2. Broccolifits better
  3. Lettucefits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cucumber, cauliflower, pepper, tomato, carrot, vinegar, turmeric. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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